Mortal Shell II Reviews
Mortal Shell II certainly has its flaws and room for improvement, but the qualitative leap compared to the first chapter is undeniable: this is the sequel that demonstrates the true potential of Cold Symmetry.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Some bugs, a couple of crashes, weak boss battles, and other strange design choices hold Mortal Shell II back from being the masterpiece I hoped it’d be, but Cold Symmetry has more than proven itself as a small-but-mighty team that knows how to deliver the action RPG goods.
Mortal Shell II is a soulslike that successfully builds upon the first game in every respect and manages to carve out a place for itself within the genre. If you enjoy soulslike games, it is a title you can pick up and play without hesitation—and even if you are somewhat distant from the genre, it is still well worth giving a chance.
Review in Turkish | Read full review
Mortal Shell 2 is a solid follow-up to the first game. Excellent combat and a dark fantasy world create a creepy, oppressive atmosphere, making it a strong contender in the Soulslike genre. However, some inconsistent balancing holds it back from taking that next step and becoming something truly special.
Mortal Shell 2 is an excellent game that creates its own identity, despite technically qualifying as a Soulslike. Since it doesn’t require any knowledge of the original, it isn’t a stretch to say that jumping directly into Mortal Shell 2 is the way to go for newcomers. The developer’s still releasing updates to tweak the difficulty and fix some graphical issues, but the game is still a blast to play through. It’s for this reason that I give it the Thumb Culture Gold Award!
Mortal Shell II has a few rough edges here and there, but it's still a very enjoyable soulslike that understands what makes the genre work while building on its own core vision
Mortal Shell 2 grows in stature and self-assurance from the first game, establishing itself as an excellent Soulslike with a rhythm of its own.
Mortal Shell 2’s expansion into a large scale action-RPG is mostly successful, and all of its new ideas are great ones.
Mortal Shell 2 constantly surprised me, whether it was the mechanics behind a newly discovered Shell, the layered improvements to combat, a bulbous monstrosity of a boss fight that was more mouth than anything else, or the ways you can tinker with a build and make it wholly your own.
Mortal Shell II is a 'fun-forward' souls-like, one that values flexibility and variety over sheer difficulty. It grabs you and plies you with a plethora of options for tackling its monsters, dungeons, and bosses, handing you shiny toys and trusts you to work out what to do with them.
Mortal Shell II tries some new things while looking and running beautiful.
If Cold Symmetry can fix the bugs that plague some of the bosses, Mortal Shell II will go down as one of the best Soulslikes on the market right now.
Mortal Shell 2 is one of the best follow-up sequels to a game in a long time. It expands upon every single aspect of the first game, twists deeper into its metal roots, and hammers out the dents of the original title while retaining the same brutal, unforgiving gameplay Soulslike fanatics have come to masochistically enjoy. Mortal Shell 2 slays.
Only a few bugs, a bit more polish, and the somewhat weak narrative might pose a problem, but none of that detracts from the fact that Mortal Shell 2 is a high-quality soulslike . You're going to have a blast playing it.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Mortal Shell 2 is an impressive Soulslike that improves on its predecessor in nearly every way, even with a few rough edges to work around.
I had an absolute blast with Mortal Shell II; it's not only a competitive, difficult Soulslike, but it also brings much-needed, welcome updates to the genre. Come for the combat and the exploration; stay for the fun and brutality.
Mortal Shell 2 is such an immensely impressive upgrade from the original that I wanted it to be flawless. Of course, it isn’t. However, issues with pacing, opacity, occasional difficulty spikes, and bugs are dwarfed by Cold Symmetry’s overall achievement.
Both frustrating and intriguing all the same, Mortal Shell II vastly improves on the original title with a world filled with secret dungeons about while routinely kicking the player's teeth in without mercy.
Mortal Shell II turned out to be a benchmark work of fixing the mistakes of its predecessor. The world exploration is engaging, and the player is rewarded for their curiosity. The weapons and shells offer plenty of room for experimentation. Of course, Cold Symmetry won't escape the label of "yet another Dark Souls clone," but the studio has done a lot to appeal to players who consciously avoid this genre.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Mortal Shell II posed a bracing challenge at the time of review, toeing the line between a character-action game and Elden Ring.